Saturday, March 12, 2016

Things You Will See On Selection Sunday

We at Sportsthodoxy boldly predict the following things will happen when the NCAA Men's Basketball tournament seedings are announced:

A deserving mid-major that lost in their conference tournament (Wichita State, Monmouth, St. Mary's - pick one) will get jobbed out of a bid that is instead awarded to a less impressive major conference team (Syracuse, Michigan, South Carolina - pick one?).

Radio pundits, when talking about who gets those last bids, will carefully avoid mentioning how participation at each round of the tournament is directly tied to conference payouts, and how one extra bid for a low- or mid-major conference is actually really significant financially.

Either Duke, Carolina or both will be scheduled to play their first couple of games at a site that is within one extended Phish jam session's drive of their home campuses.

There will be immediate speculation over which 5 seed is going to get bumped off in their opening game.

People will scan their brackets for the first game Villanova has that looks remotely tough and picking Nova to lose because, well, that's what they do in the tournament.

Kentucky will be under seeded.

The PAC 12 will get at least six teams in and then complain about East Coast bias.

Chattanooga, UNI, and Gonzaga will be talked up as trendy upset possibilities.

Supporters of the conference with the most teams in will crow about how their conference is now proven superior. (They will go oddly silent when at least one of their schools gets thumped in the round of 64 by a school from a mid-major conference that starts with M)

At least one announcer will in fact confuse the MAC, the MEAC, and the MAAC.

There will be lengthy discussions of how one team's loss in a conference final had no effect on their final seeding because it's about the body of work, while another team's loss in a conference final knocked them off a 1-seed because those conference championships are very important, don't you know.

No one will dare tell Joe Lunardi that Bracketology is a made up thing and that "Bracketologist" just sounds silly.